Evolution of Project Management

Abstract

People have been running projects for centuries, and those experiences have led to a science of project management. When people began building software, however, applying initial project management theory to software development did not work out as well as expected. Later, manufacturing practices were applied to create software engineering, which worked only slightly better. Recently, project management theory and software engineering practices have made an evolutionary improvement, and agile software development is part of that improvement. The current state of project management is the culmination of centuries of experience and theory. It is especially important for software developers of all kinds and their management to understand that agile is not another new fad.